Absolutely disappointing. Everyone is waiting to hear what the new features will be in the next version of Internet Explorer 8 will have...and still no information out in the open. Microsoft, knows it has a trust issue with its customers...yet they have yet to learn that trust is built on good communication. This is what Microsoft's IEBloggers have to say:
As a teenager in the 1980's, I mowed lawns for three reasons. I mowed lawns to save money for college. I mowed lawns for spending money on the weekends. Finally, I mowed lawns to buy the Commodore Vic-20 and eventually I purchased the Commodore 64. I was neither envious of the school's Apple II's nor my neighbor's TI-99/4A. I had a Commodore 64 and I was cool even before geeks were cool.
I felt fear, awe, and even some admiration when I read at CNET about the latest social engineering attack dreamed up by those ingenious Russian hackers.
Those entering online dating forums risk having more than their hearts stolen.
A program that can mimic online flirtation and then extract personal
information from its unsuspecting conversation partners is making the
rounds in Russian chat forums, according to security software firm PC Tools.
John Newton has written a fantastic summary regarding social computing (or is it social networking or social content management) and its role in the enterprise. The post is titled, A Manifesto for Social Computing in the Enterprise.
I plan to talk about Newton's post and social networking at a later date. Howerver, there isn't any reason why you shouldn't be able to read Newton's post now. Consider it homework for a later visit here at CMSReport.com.
Elgg, an open source social networking platform, opened its development process much wider the past few months. Not every company that goes fully open source benefits from the changes in their license or the changes in how they develop and manage the code. However, open source seems to be treating Elgg very nicely these days.
Markus Karlsson, CEO of Emojo, sent CMS Report an e-mail regarding extending social content management features into their "eBusiness Suite", Affino. In the e-mail he says:
We’re launching the Social Content Management edition of the Affino eBusiness Suite (please see details below). It has a number of tailored social content management, social media, social networking and social promotions elements essential for managing socially lead sites. These are quite different from traditional web and enterprise CM capabilities so may be of interest to you.
If you could give us feedback or a mention then that would be greatly appreciated.
I'm short on time for doing any type of review or give any meaningful feedback on this CMS. However, I have posted below the press release he sent attached to the e-mail. Also, you can check out the new features in the latest release of Affino at Emojo.com. Finally, if you have used Affino before, I would be interested in hearing what you have to say about it via the comments section.
I have not had time to talk about Google's Highly Open Participation Contest. Luckily, Amy Stephen posted a good article about the contest at Open Source Community which I encourage you to read. In the article, she talks about the positives of this program for both the high school age coders as well as the open source communities involved.
As Amy mentions in her article, Google invited ten Open Source projects, including Apache Software Foundation, Drupal, GNOME, Joomla!, MoinMoin, Mono, Moodle, Plone, Python and SilverStripe to participate. In Google's own words this is what they have to say about their program:
I just completed one of the most exhausting days at work I've had since switching over from operations to IT. Everyone wanted a "minute of my time" which translates in the real world to 20 minutes (if I was lucky). The last thing I really wanted to do after work was touch a computer. Yet, I find myself too excited to not type about some great news.
What is the good news? Dries Buytaert, project leader for Drupal, is starting his first Drupal startup. The working name for the company is Acquia.
Thus, I'm starting a Drupal company whose current working name is 'Acquia'. Acquia's software products will include a number of Drupal distributions -- for community networks, digital media properties, corporate websites, and others. In addition to providing Drupal distributions, Acquia will build the Drupal-tuned analogue of the RedHat Network, over which we can deliver a wide variety of electronic services intended to be useful to people developing and operating Drupal websites. An example such service is an automated upgrade/update service, an uptime and performance monitoring / reporting service, a configuration management service, etc.
Does anyone else see the irony in Drupal's founder not beginning his first Drupal startup until seven years after releasing Drupal publicly? Think of all the developers, IT leaders, and companies that have prospered over the years from Drupal. In all that time, Dries has been very careful to not benefit more than others in the Drupal community. All in all, I think Dries has shown the highest respect for open source as well as loyalty to the Drupal community.
Already, some of the other CMS news related sites are wondering how the Drupal community will react to Dries' announcement. Comparisons are already being made to other open source CMS projects that have been torn between commercial and community interests. Take this CMS Watch post for instance: